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Jade Do, right, presents a flower commemorating a student lost to gun violence to her teacher Pollyanna Parker (left) at Saturday's March for Our Lives at Clarksville's McGregor Park.
Tony Centonze / For The Leaf-Chronicle

About 200 people gathered in Clarksville on Saturday for a rally to push for safer schools in the wake of school shootings from across the nation.

The local March for Our Lives event at McGregor Park did not include a march, but speeches, poems and music from students at local schools. Some waved signs and others passed out flowers symbolizing school shooting victims.

“I think the issue of gun violence is a very important issue that affects all of us,” said Nahan Abubucker, 16, a high school student at Middle College at Austin Peay State University who helped organize the Clarksville event. “Despite that, there is very little we’re doing to fix it. I think this will raise awareness in the community and bring the community together to find a solution.”

For some, that meant more gun control. But not for all.

Catherine Howard, 17, read messages to Congress.

“You should be ashamed as the countless headlines pour in listing the names of innocent lives lost to gun violence,” she said. “Our lives are worth more than the money from your lobbyists.”

Another asked how many more times students will die in schools due to inaction.

“Time after time we sit and we wait and we watch in horror, for what?” she read. “So we can share condolences with ‘likes?’ Likes do not save lives. Commends do not conjure the dead. Retweets will not reunite broken families.”

The Clarksville High student said the voices of youth are valid.

“The audacity and irony of you, you allowing us as 18-year-olds to purchase and AR-15 but refusing to listen to us.”

Another organizer, Mallory Fundora, 18, of Rossview High School, said it’s important to protect the students of the future.

“I have a 2-year-old nephew who will be in the school system soon enough, and I think it’s important to make a better life for him,” she said. “It doesn’t matter your solution to the problem as long as there is a solution. There needs to be a solution.”

Bundles of flowers from numerous school shootings were placed in a holder near the podium and then passed out to the many parents, grandparents, teachers, city leaders and others who turned out to support the students who organized the rally.

Some cried quietly as another student played a song.

Rebecca Gill, 18, of Rossview High, said she was excited to see the community come together and “acknowledge the problem.”

She said politics shouldn’t stop the search for answers.

“We let politics overcome the problem when there’s kids scared to go to school every day,” Gill said.

Clarksville Mayor Kim McMillan said she was proud to see students work to make a difference.

“They have done this on their own,” she said. “They have shown that young people can make a difference in our community.”

Reach Reporter Stephanie Ingersoll at singersoll@theleafchronicle.com or 931-245-0267 and on Twitter @StephLeaf